Functional Android 4.4.2 KitKat Arrives on the Sony Xperia M

Although only released last year, one wouldn’t really say that the Sony Xperia M is a very distinguishable device, especially in the vast sea of Android phones. With some middle of the road specs including a 4-inch screen with 480 x 854 resolution, a dual-core 1 GHz CPU and 1 GB of ram, one will probably be forgiven to think that it’s simply ‘just’ another Android device.

But despite this, it’s still great to see it receive attention from developers, as there’s now a highly-functional Android 4.4.2 KitKat build for the Xperia M. Thanks to the efforts of XDA Senior Member PecanCM, Xperia M users will be able to experience Kitkat in the form of an unofficial CyanogenMod 11 build even before Sony has given any indication of an official KitKat update.

Although the build is still in its alpha build, the working is remarkably extensive and includes all the important functions such as:

The RIL (ie. calls, SMS, mobile data)

Display

Camera, video, panorama

Audio and video playback

Audio recording

WiFi & WiFi tethering

Bluetooth & Bluetooth tethering

OpenGL rendering

Hardware video decoding & encoding

Sensors (ie. accelerometer,compass,light,proximity)

Sd card

Auto brightness

Notification led

NFC

GPS

Despite this, it should be noted that because the build is in its alpha phase, there will be bugs and hiccups that may not have been reported or documented yet. Additionally, the dual-sim variant of the Xperia M is not officially supported by PecanCM, but XDA Senior Member ansebovi has figured out a relatively straightforward way to get this working with the dual-sim Xperia M.

If you would like to follow the development progress of Android 4.4.2 on the Xperia M, visit the original thread for more details. And for owners of the dual-sim Xperia M interested in giving this a go, check out ansebovi’s workaround post.